Monday, September 29, 2008

Mom taught us that when you make a meal you can put just about anything found in the fridge in it, as long as you start by frying up hamburger meat and celery. To this base she would add things like peas, ketchup, stewed tomatoes, raisins, Italian dressing, tortilla shells, and any other condiment imaginable. Despite this seemingly horrible method of child abuse, we were grateful for her cooking for one reason, it meant that GrandMa was not cooking.Grandma's cooking was and still is comparable to an episode of fear factor. Her specialty was soup into which what ever rotting vegetable on the counter top was thrown in. Grandma did not refrigerate her produce for reasons unknown, and when the stench became overwhelming enough or the juices began to drip on the floor, she would have us take them outback, along with all the eggshells she had been saving the past week, and throw them into the garden as compost.

Along with this came a menagerie of outdated and odd table manners we were forced to submit to, such as eating our peas on a knife. Dinnertime was always accompanied with an account on how her father had and required his children to have impeccable table manners and how we should just be grateful...not for anything in particular but just in general.

Later in my teenage years when grandma no longer lived with us we came to a sort of truce if you will. Mom was busy working and may have been somewhat put out with the mental strain of thinking up these bizarre concoctions she called meals, and we kids ( now teens ) yearned for more popular food alternatives, such as mac and cheese, pop tarts, and ramen. At some point in my life I became so ravenously hungry that "good cook" was vital in a potential mate . So I married a man ... barefoot and in the kitchen you can find him cooking up the most savory fare, recipes passed on from generation to generation and yes we and our children are very happy and pleasantly plump. Heaven bless those who can cook.